Decorating the New House

I promised pictures of the house once I got it into order, and since I scrambled to get some decorating done before my family came, I should post some pictures of it now. Some rooms are still unfinished, but this is what I was able to get done so far.

I started by going a little nuts with textiles and hanging pretty much every piece of my fairly extensive collection. Most of my textiles are from Kyrgyzstan, but I have pieces from Peru, Panama, and Cameroon too.

Kyrgyz shyrdak upstairs

Kyrgyz souzani in the stairwell, Kyrgyz and Panamanian squares above

Kyrgyz shyrdak, knotted carpet and embroidery near front door

Cameroonian batik and elephant paintings in dining area

The first room we got set up was our bedroom, which is all in chocolate tones. The walls are a kind of nasty, mustardy brown, but we needed to live in here, so we haven’t repainted it yet. Note the curtain on the right hand side of the frame, which acts as a door to the master bath. It’s actually a dark purple, but it blends pretty well with the browns in the room. You can see I haven’t put anything on the walls or the shelves in there yet.

our bedroom

Then of course there is the guest room, that I repainted for my folks’ visit. I’ve always wanted to do a room inspired by the colors of the winter sky, snow, and dry oak leaves, and I think I got something close, even though the blue walls are a lot more saturated than a winter sky. I had some nice carved woodblock panels that I think go really well in this room. I also had a couple of short shelving units that I think worked really well as bookshelves/bedside tables.

guest room

We also set up the upstairs den as a kind of media center, since the projector, screen, and DVD player that came with the house are up there. I moved in shelves of books, DVDs, and CDs to enjoy, with a few more tapestries and a painting I have.

media room

The futon usually goes in this room, and we have a recliner that we want to put up here too, so that folks have somewhere to sit if they want to watch a movie, or just read. But my sister J needed someplace to sleep while she was visiting, so we moved the futon into the jungle room for her. It’s a fairly small room, and the full-sized futon pretty much took up the whole space. I wanted to get more up on the walls, but I don’t think J really minded.

jungle room with futon

We want to keep the tree, even though it takes up a lot of space, because we plan on using this as a baby room in the future (knock on wood, tu-tu-tu). But it will be our office/craft room in the meantime. Once the futon gets moved back to the media room, I am planning on moving the card table and folding chair we bought for extra Thanksgiving seating up there to use. It should help me get through all of the Christmas presents I need to make this year!

And speaking of Christmas presents, this weekend I was a knitting maniac. Of the three knitted presents I am making, I finished one, got 90% of the way through a second, and halfway through a third. But I have 10 more non-knitted presents to finish, and only about 15 crafting days before Christmas — yikes!